Fifty Years--And More than Camelot Has Disappeared

The Funeral of President Kennedy leaves the

Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle

  This weekend we have been flooded with memories of the November 1963 assassination of President John Kennedy in Dallas.  Those of us who are old enough to remember the event, can tell you exactly where we were and what we were doing when we heard the news.  But this might be an opportunity also to reflect on just how much our Catholic life has changed over these fifty years. 
Fifty years ago Mass was still in Latin, though plans were being made for lent the following year to introduce the vernacular languages on a very limited basis for the penitential prayers, the readings, and the Lord’s Prayer. We were assured that the consecration and other key prayers would always remain in Latin. Hymns in the language of the people could now be sung at Mass—though very few parishes had any tradition of congregational singing.  A few churches—very few—had begun positioning the priest to face the people at Mass.
We were at the tail end—though we didn’t know it yet—of a vocation boom that had started with the return of GI’s at the end of World War II.  Seminaries and novitiates were filled and ordinations were at an all-time high.    Religious women were still in their traditional habits and priests were rarely seen without their collars—and wearing hats: straw in the summer, homburgs in the winter.  Women too wore hats to Church—or, the style set by First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, the mantilla. 
We Catholics did not eat meat on Fridays and only once a day in lent.  Moreover in Lent as well as the Vigil of Christmas, Ember Days, and certain other days we ate only one full meal, supplemented by two light “collations” that together could not add up to a meal.  May Crownings, Forty Hours, novenas, Holy Hours, and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament all were part of the regular rhythm of parish life.  The priest wore black vestments for funerals and most daily masses which were offered for the dead.  At funerals a wonderful sequence was sung called the Dies Irae, heralding the final judgment in bone-chilling verse.  As it was in Latin it lacked the impact however and was just a pretty piece of music.    
We had no lay ministers of the Eucharist, permanent deacons, Religious Education coordinators, Directors of Liturgy, pastoral associates, parish councils, finance boards, cantors, or youth ministers.  We did have Altar and Rosary Societies, Holy Name Societies, Saint Vincent de Paul, Mothers’ Club, Sodality, and Knights of the Altar.  Only boys could serve Mass—and, in fact, a girl got inside the gates of the altar rail twice in her life—first communion and her wedding day (but only if she married Catholic).  Of course if she became a nun she would go in to vacuum, change the altar linens, and fix the flowers.  Where there were no nuns to do this work, a mature matron might be allowed.  O yes—I forgot, we still had altar rails because we still knelt for Holy Communion.  Communion was never received in the hand—we could not have imagined it—nor did we every receive from the chalice.
Religion class was mostly memorizing the Baltimore Catechism, though if you went to Catholic School there was time to tell you stories of the saints or of the apparitions of the Blessed Mother.  In Catholic School you also learned Gregorian Chant—especially Mass 8 (Missa de Angelis).  Some parishes had decent—even good—choirs and lovely pipe organs.  We never heard an instrument other than the organ played in Church.  Most of the time, however, the quality of the music reflected the blue-collar working class makeup of American Catholicism.  It would only be in the sixties and seventies, and mostly as a result of the GI Bill, that significant numbers of Catholics moved up into the professional and managerial classes.  The slow rise of Catholics in the professions and business was due in part to lingering bias against them from the Protestant establishment.    
It wasn’t a bad way to grow up.  There was a distinct Catholic culture that left your Protestant friends a bit bewildered but maybe a little bit jealous too.  Little Methodist girls sometimes wanted to be nuns when they grew up because they (the nuns) looked so cool with those long dresses and heavy veils.  Catholics were different—there was something a bit exotic about us.
Of course, underneath the surface all was not well.  Mody of the abuse cases that have caused such a crisis for the Church date back to the ’50’s and’60’s.  Alcoholism was rampant among the clergy—though it was certainly epidemic in the larger society as well.  Convent life was not always a calm and peaceful as it appeared in The Nuns’ Story or The Sound of Music.   
Of course Viet Nam had not yet bloomed into a full scale war and the subsequent anti-war movement had not yet emerged.  Catholics were rabid anti-communists and the Fatima devotion was used to strengthen our resolve against communism.  We were a bit bewildered however as Pope John’s 1961 encyclical Mater et Magistra attracted much positive attention from the Communist world.  The April 1963 encyclical Pacem in Terris won even more recognition from the Communist world.  John XXIII in the last months of his life received the daughter and son-in-law of Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev in audience and gave them symbolic gifts for Khrushchev as well as for their own family.   John’s openness to the Soviet Union was a cause of anxiety for American Churchmen, particularly Cardinal Spellman of New York, who were anxious to keep Vatican in line with American foreign policy.  In 1963 we were still saying the Leonine Prayers after low mass which originally had been for the restoration of the Papal States but had come to be directed towards the “conversion of Russia.”  And of course that reminds me that at this time we still distinguished between “High Mass” (which was sung) and “Low Mass” (which was read sotto voce).  Despite all sort of claims how beautiful the pre-conciliar rites were, most Masses were these recited Masses at which the priest prayed privately and the congregation silently followed along in their missal or occupied themselves with other devotions such as the rosary.  Such rites were bland at best. 
Our churches were filled with statues—usually of mediocre artistic quality done in plaster on a mass-production line.  Votive candles in red and green and blue stood grouped before the various altars.  There often was, at least in the better built churches, some lovely stained glass.  Similarly vestments and paraments were often beautifully embroidered and hopefully (but not always) kept clean and in good repair.  People bobbed in and out of Church to make “visits” to Jesus present in the Sacrament of the Altar. 
All in all, I think it was a wonderful way to grow up.  I doubt it could have lasted.  In part due to the excellent educational system the Church built, Catholics were raising themselves up by the bootstraps—but rising into the Middle Class and leaving immigrant ways behind meant integration into the larger society as well.  The Catholic Ghetto, constructed so carefully by men like Archbishop Corrigan and Bishop McQuaid was doomed to come down at Catholic hands.  I for one would not want to go back even if I could—but it was a wonderful way to grow up. 

The Knights and the Leesburg Crusade

Now, I admit it is a bit secular but wouldn't it be

nicer at the Courthouse than a skeleton in a Santa

suit--and more traditional too, in fact more in Virginia

tradition than a creche. 

There is definitely something in the water in Loudon County Virginia that causes Virginians to alter their reality coordinates.  Jeff Heflin and his mother mounted a holiday display of a crucified skeletal Santa Claus on the Courthouse lawn.  Now that may sound bizarre to you, but it is only the latest chapter in a long saga of religious wars in this solidly Christian and Republican town.  Leesburg, by the way, is the home of former Senator Rick Santorum, currently a 2012 presidential candidate, and the tainted water theory probably explains quite a few things there as well. 

      The issue began several years back when the County government said that there could be no holiday displays mounted on the Courthouse lawn in the center of Leesburg during the Christmas season.  Loudon County is pretty solidly Christian with both strong Evangelical and Catholic contingents.  (The Evangelicals represent many of the long-time residents; the Catholics came mostly with the housing developments that have just swamped this once charmingly rural area into what is now a bedroom-suburb of Washington DC, about an hour to the south along the Potomac.)   Many residents were outraged that there would be no crèche on the Courthouse lawn.  There had been a crèche placed there at private expense for over twenty years and the Rotary club had sponsored a Christmas Tree there for half a century. 

     Knights of Columbus Holy Family Council 6831 attached to Saint John the Apostle Church in Leesburg was not about to stand by for this secularization.  They organized a protest that led the County Board to reconsider the policy and the board decided in fairness to all citizens ten displays could be put on the Courthouse grounds on a “first come first serve” basis.  What the Knights had not foreseen was that not only would Christian groups with good will for all vie for Christmas displays, and perhaps a Jewish group would want a Chanukah display (there aren’t many Jews in Loudon County), but atheist groups might want their displays as well. (I am unaware of any requests from Islamic groups, but that would provoke an interesting response.)   In fact, since atheism isn’t seasonal, disbelievers mounted displays throughout the year.  Now as a reward to the Knights’ efforts, there is a war of competing ideologies going on in the middle of this otherwise quaint town.  It is a bit confusing about this crucified Santa however as the woman who put it up is an atheist but her son who helped her is a Christian.  They claim that it isn’t a pro-atheist statement but rather a “piece of art” that draws our attention to how the true Spirit of the Season has been corrupted into gross materialism.  Well, they do have a point but the work is somewhat ambiguous.  Art, after all, says what the viewer apprehends not necessarily what the artist intends. 

      Anyway, we owe this imbroglio to the Knights of Columbus who undoubtedly meant well but who opened Pandora’s Box of religious strife.   The Knights are now insisting that Christian displays be allowed but that atheists not be given space on the Courthouse lawn.  That solution will obviously not hold up constitutionally.    Tempers are running high in Leesburg and the Prince of Peace is becoming a symbol of civic strife—not for the first time in history.      Of course in colonial days when Leesburg had its origins there would have been no issue.  There would not have been a crèche—far too Catholic in a colony where Catholicism was illegal.  There would have been some festive holiday greens perhaps.  The Christmas tree had not yet come from Germany but Virginians draped laurel and evergreen and holly swags and wreathes to cheer them against the cold days and long nights of winter.  Perhaps if there is to be decoration of public property it should be this discreet sort of greening and let the religious displays be made on private and Church properties.  A crèche on the lawns of the Presbyterian and Methodist and Catholic  Churches would be lovely and a contest among them good ecumenical fun;  an electric Menorah at the synagogue (though I think Leesburg’s solitary synagogue is pretty far out of town center) would be pretty silhouetted against the darkening skies of December would non-offensively to anyone give hope.   And you know, I don’t think anyone—even an atheist—would really want a crucified Santa in front of their home.  As for the Courthouse, deck the halls and call it quits.  Besides, the lawns, though spacious, are not nearly expansive enough to handle ten displays without looking tawdry.    And Knights—let’s do something constructive that reminds the world that Christ came to gather all people together into one and not to stir up sectarian strife.  Crusades are over.  They were a disaster.  This is the age of Pacem in Terris. 

Backpedaling from Vatican II?

I noticed this petition at morning prayer today and it made me very sad. 

Make us eager to work with you in building a better world so that it may listen to your Church and its gospel of peace--Jesus, you feed and heal our souls; come to strengthen us. 

It made me sad because I am not sure that the Church’s Gospel is the Gospel of Peace.  I think sometimes—and, to be frank,  more than sometimes—we talk out of both sides of our mouth.  I enjoy working on this blog but I think you can see as clearly as I do that, not the Church, but the Institution of the Church (and they have to  be distinguished because on several levels they are different realities) has as its primary agenda, not the Gospel, but its own self-preservation.  In fact, I do believe that in the years during and immediately after the Second Vatican Council the Church—and here I mean the whole Church, Institution and popular reality, was enthused by the Gospel.  John XXIII’s Pacem in Terris gave us a new and energetic vision, a holistic vision, an integrated approach to faith and life-in-this-world.  O sure there were voices that decried it, did not understand it, were terrified of it—voices that even saw how it would undo their own positions of power.  It totally overturned the cosmology of Alfredo Ottaviani and other traditionalists such as Giuseppe Siri, Marcel Lefebvre, the American Francis McIntyre, and others, but in the papacy of Paul VI they were not able to seize the upper hand and there was a strong hope for a true evangelical renewal of our Catholic Church.   There was a period in which the Church—Institution and faithful together—became the cry of peace and the voice of justice.  Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio, echoed by voices such as Dom Helder Camara and Oscar Romero had not only credibility but a power that led men and women to give their lives—literally—for the Gospel to the poor.  With leaders in the Church like Basil Hume and Paul Hallinan, Paulo Arns, Joseph Bernardin, Denis Hurley, the Institutional dimension of the Church had a credibility among those people of good will who were anxious to see the human family brought together in solidarity with one another.  I am intrigued to figure out what happened to reverse that dynamic over the last thirty years but it does seem that we have reverted to an emphasis on the Institution rather than the Mission.   There are prophetic voices in the Church today but at least in the developed world they seem more on the periphery, without the weight of the Institution behind them.   Why didn’t the American bishops pass on papal objections to the Gulf Wars?  Why are we not hearing about the plight of our Catholic and Christian brothers and sisters in Palestine and in the Arab World?   Where is a Catholic critique of the economic injustices that led to the financial collapse of 2008?  Granted there were problems with the Obamacare proposals, especially in regard to the sanctity of life, but where were the hierarchical voices giving leadership for a Catholic approach to universal health care?  Where is Church leadership on the moral issues of how we are dealing with the current budget crunch?  Maybe the Church has lost its moral credibility due to the clerical sex scandals—or, more likely, to the way the hierarchy has handled the sexual misconduct issues—but the way to rebuild that moral credibility is not to remain silent on controversial issues but to develop a consistent social ethic and not only teach it and preach it, but live it.  Maybe the Institution needs to shed some of its own blood and surrender some of its own power and even alienate some of its own supporters, but we need leadership—sound leadership—that can inspire us with the gospel and we are not getting it.   Cardinal Burke (seen blog for April 4, 2011) thinks that the reason the Church is bleeding members is “poor” celebrations of the liturgy—by which he means we lack in pomp and circumstance—but His Eminence’s galero is too tight and is choking blood supply to an already enfeebled cerebellum.  The reason that we are bleeding members is that the gospel fire is going out in the hearts of those who have been called to lead.